the remainder of the route between Silverton and Albany, where he parted with his Canandaigua friends, they going on to the westward, while he stopped all night in Albany, where he had some business to transact for his father. And this was why he did not reach New York until late in the afternoon of the following day.
He was intending to tell his mother everything, except indeed that he paid Katy's bills. He would rather keep that to himself, as it might shock his mother's sense of propriety and make her think less of Katy, impulsive, confiding Katy, little dreaming as on that rainy afternoon she sat in the kitchen at Silverton, with her feet in the stove-oven and the cat asleep in her lap, of the conversation taking place between Wilford Cameron and his mother. They had left the dinner table, and lighting his cigar, which for that one time the mother permitted in the parlor, Wilford opened the subject by asking her to guess what took him off so suddenly with Mrs. Woodhull.
The mother did not know—unless—and a strange light gleamed in her eyes, as she asked if it were some girl.
"Yea, mother, it was," and without any reservation Wilford frankly told the story of his interest in Katy Lennox.
He admitted that she was poor and unaccustomed to society, but he loved her more than words could express.
"Not as I loved Genevra," he said, as he saw his mother about to speak, and there came a look of intense pain into his fine eyes as he continued: "That was the passion of a boy of nineteen, simulated by secrecy, but this is different—this is the love of a mature man of thirty, who feels that he is capable of judging for himself."
In Wilford's voice there was a tone warning the mother that opposition would only feed the flame, and so she offered none directly, but heard him patiently to the end, and then quietly questioned him of Katy and her family, especially the last. What did he know of it? Was it one to detract from the Cameron line kept untarnished so long? Were the relatives such as he never need blush to own, even if they came there into their drawing-room, as they would come if Katy did?
Wilford thought of Uncle Ephraim as he had seen him upon the platform at Silverton, and could scarcely repress a smile as he pictured to himself his mother's consternation at beholding that man in her drawing-room, but he did not mention the deacon, though he acknowledged that Katy's family friends were not exactly the Cameron style. But Katy was young; Katy could be easily molded, and once away from her old associates, his mother and sisters could make of her what they pleased.
"I understand, then, that if you marry her you do not marry the family," and in the handsome, matronly face there was an expression from which Katy would have shrunk; could she have seen it and understood its meaning.
"No, I do not marry the family," Wilford rejoined, emphatically, but the expression of his face was different from his mother's, for where she thought only of herself, not hesitating to trample on all Katy's love of home and friends, Wilford remembered Katy, thinking how he would make amends for separating her wholly from her home, as he surely meant to do if he should win her. "Did I tell you," he continued, "that her father was a judge? She must be well connected on that side, though I never heard of a Judge Lennox in any of our courts."
"It must have been when you were in Europe the first time," Mrs. Cameron suggested, and as if the mention of Europe reminded him of something else, Wilford rejoined: "Katy would be kind to Jamie, mother. In some things she is almost as much a child as he, poor fellow," and again there came into his eyes a look of pain, while his voice was sadder in its tone, just as it always was when he spoke of little Jamie. "And now, what shall I do?" he asked, playfully. "Shall I propose to Katy Lennox, or shall I try to forget her?"
"I should not do either," was Mrs. Cameron's reply for she well knew that trying to forget her was the surest way of keeping her in mind, and she dared not confess to him how wholly she was determined that Katy Lennox should never be her daughter if she could prevent it.
If she could not, then as a lady and a woman of policy, she should make the most of it, receiving Katy kindly and doing her best to educate her up to the Cameron ideas of style and manner.
"Let matters take their course for a while," she said, "and see how you feel after a little. We are going to Newport the first of August, Jamie and all, and perhaps you may find somebody there infinitely superior to this Katy Lennox. That's your father's ring. He is earlier than usual to-night. I would not tell him yet till you are more decided," and the lady went hastily out into the hall to meet her husband.
A moment more and the elder Cameron appeared—a short, square-built man, with a face seamed with lines of care and eyes much like Wilford's, save that the shaggy eyebrows gave them a different expression. He was very glad to see his son, though he merely shook his hand, asking what nonsense took him off around the Lakes with Mrs. Woodhull, and wondering if women were never happy unless they were chasing after fashion. The elder Cameron was evidently not of his wife's way of thinking, but she let him go on until he was through, and then, with the most unruffled mien, suggested that his dinner would he cold. He was accustomed to that, and so he did not mind, but he hurried through his lonely meal to-night, for Wilford was home, and the father was always happier when he knew his son was in the house. Contrary to his usual custom, he spent the short summer evening in the parlor, talking with Wilford on various items of business, and thus preventing any further conversation concerning Katy Lennox, who just as their evening was commencing, was bowing the knee reverently between her sister and her uncle, listening while the good old man invoked the nightly blessing, without which he never retired to sleep. But in that household on Fifth Avenue there was no blessing asked of Heaven, no word of thanksgiving for the prosperity so long vouchsafed, no prayer said except by the crippled Jamie, who, remembering the Savior of whom Morris Grant had told him when across the sea, whispered his childish prayer, thanking him most for bringing back the uncle so dearly loved, the Wilford who, on his way to his own room, had stopped as he always did to say good-night to Jamie, folding his arms around him and kissing his sweet face with a fondness in which there was something half regretful, half sad, as well as pleasing.
It took but a short time for Wilford to fall back into his old way of living, passing a few hours of each day in his office, driving with his mother, reading to little Jamie, sparring with his imperious sister, Juno, and teasing his blue sister, Bell, but never after that first night breathing a word to any one of Katy Lennox. And still Katy was not forgotten, as his mother sometimes believed. On the contrary, the very silence he kept concerning her increased his passion, until he began seriously to contemplate a trip to Silverton. The family's removal to Newport, however, diverted his attention for a little, making him decide to wait and see what Newport might have in store for him. But Newport was dull this season, at least to him, though Juno and Bell both found ample scope for their different powers of attraction, and his mother was always happy when showing off her children and knowing that they were appreciated. With Wilford it was different. Listless and taciturn, he went through with the daily routine, wondering how he had ever found happiness there, and finally, at the close of the season, casting all policy and prudence aside, he wrote to Katy Lennox that he was coming to Silverton on his way home, and that he presumed he should have no difficulty in finding his way to the farmhouse.
CHAPTER IV.
PREPARING FOR THE VISIT.
"Of course he will not, for I shall ask Dr. Morris to go after him in his carriage," Katy said, as out in the orchard where she was gathering the early harvest apples she read the letter brought her by Uncle Ephraim,
